


Learn From Fools

by acheaptrickandacheesyoneline



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Classic Rock, F/M, Oliver is a fan of Classic Rock and you can't convince me otherwise, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5541308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acheaptrickandacheesyoneline/pseuds/acheaptrickandacheesyoneline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A news report on Oliver Queen makes Felicity come home from work at Palmer Tech earlier than expected. She does not expect what she finds at their home, nor that Oliver was that talented.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learn From Fools

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andcreation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andcreation/gifts).



> Thank you to Imususallyobsessed and dettiot for their beta reads on this, and for reassuring me that I got Felicity right my first time writing her.

Felicity Smoak hated being CEO of Palmer Tech some days. Or, really, she hated it more at certain times than others. Board meetings were one of those times. Thankfully, she hadn’t needed to go to one in a while as they were really only once a quarter. Far better than the every other week that had been happening back when she first took over, so she would mark that in the win column.

 

No, the times when she honest to Google really hated it generally hit at around 5:30 PM on a Friday when everyone else was leaving the building and she was stuck in her office wearing heels that were sort of starting to really hurt and knew she wouldn’t be going home any time soon.

 

And it wasn’t like her days back in her the cubes of IT where she could just kick off her shoes until she had to go somewhere. No, as CEO it was her responsibility to always be put together and on point. The face of the company and all that.

 

The point remained. She missed her panda flats.

 

Her small radio that had traveled with her from cube to glass walled office was quietly playing music when she finally made it back to her desk and the comfort of her chair with a sigh. Felicity frowned at it for a moment as she mentally berated herself for wasting electricity by leaving it on when she hadn’t been in her office all day. It was a small thing compared to her computers--especially those in Arrow Cave--but still. Everyone had to do their part.

 

Her work was down to emails at this point. Well, emails and some research that Curtis had sent her way about some new tech he had made. And could she possibly maybe forward it onto the Green Arrow since she worked with him and all. 

 

Nails tapping on the desk next to her, she read over several proposals from various directors on the direction they would like to take their department, vaguely paying attention to the classic rock that was playing next to her. Oliver had changed the station from her normal “top hits” station last time he had visited, and she hadn’t gotten around to changing it back yet. He had mentioned that classic rock was a genre that never changed, even after he got back from the island, so it was one of the few that he could actually keep listening to. Apparently, modern pop and everything was too confusing for him.

 

Which, given his original cover story of a club, was pretty funny when she thought about it. 

 

Felicity had to give it to him though. Listening to Queen wasn’t a bad way to end her day, whether it be his voice in her ear or Freddie’s on the radio. 

 

Speaking of Queen...She spun her chair so she was facing the radio when she heard her boyfriend’s name (she still got butterflies in her stomach when she called him her boyfriend) mentioned. 

 

_ “Thankfully, all’s well that ends well for Mayoral Candidate Oliver Queen after his tomato soup shower at the shelter. While his suit might be ruined, his smile certainly wasn’t. In our traffic report, we are having some slow moving…” _

 

“Skunks?” Felicity questioned aloud. She knew that Oliver was going to be working at one of the soup kitchens in the Glades for a campaign thing that whats-his-face had planned for today. But a tomato soup shower? She fiddled with her glasses, resettling them on her face from where they had fallen when she had wrinkled her nose. “Clearly skunks,” she decided. “Why else would he need tomato soup.” She gave herself a mental shake to clear her head and gathered her purse. “And that is my cue to go home.”

 

Home. To the loft she shared with Oliver. Her boyfriend.

 

Yeah. Calling him that was never going to get old.

 

~~~

 

She kicked off her heels as soon as she closed and locked the door behind her. “Oh, that feels good,” she moaned quietly, spreading her toes wide. Oliver’s keys were hanging on his hook when she went to hang hers. He must have beaten her home from work.

 

It was a rare thing when that happened, but it generally meant a night off from Arrow work as one of the other team members ran patrols and coms that night. Plus it meant that Oliver would be in the kitchen, cooking them a dinner that would rival any of the five star restaurants she could now afford to take them to.

 

Never mind that her choice was still take out and Big Belly Burger. Some things would never change, regardless of money, and one of those was that Big Belly still made the best burgers she had ever tasted outside of Vegas. And sure, she might have had a jet now. Well, Palmer Tech had a jet that she could use. But she drew the line at using it just to go to Vegas to get a burger.

 

But he wasn't in the kitchen when she rounded the corner. 

 

“Oliver?” Felicity listened for a moment after she called his name. Nothing. Given his sneaky ninja skills, it wasn’t surprising, but he made it a point to generally respond when she called his name. “Oliver, are you home?” Could he not hear her? 

 

She didn’t  _ think _ skunks damaged hearing on top of smelling bad, but maybe it was a distraction to hearing things. She had never been sprayed by a skunk - thank Intel- but if the last few months had taught her anything, it was that anything was possible.

 

“I heard on the radio that you had to cut your visit to the soup kitchen short today because you got a bath. Not like, a bath bath, but that could probably be a really good fundraiser if we advertised it right and made it so that you were at least wearing swimming trunks and didn’t have to have people using sponges and things on you, so maybe a dunk tank would be a better idea.” She paused, and, hearing what sounded like noises from their bedroom, collected her shoes and went up the stairs. “A tomato soup bath though? I thought you only needed those for if skunks sprayed you. Which makes me wonder how a skunk got into the building and if it’s really that sanitary of a place to be getting food from if one was abl…”

 

Felicity trailed off as she walked into the bedroom and heard the shower running. The shower, however, was  _ not _ what had stopped her mid-babble. Nothing as mundane as that would ever have stopped something so powerful. 

 

What stopped her mid-word was that, through the closed bathroom door, she could hear Oliver. Singing.

 

Oliver Queen was singing in the shower.

 

And it wasn’t something from one of the hip hop albums that Roy used to have playing when he was in the lair for training, or some pop song that he might have heard from visiting Thea at Verdant.  

 

No, based on the fact that he was slowly moving up the musical register as he was singing the words “Sing with me, sing for the year”, Felicity was more than 100% sure that Oliver was singing Aerosmith. 

 

And, wow. She cocked her head to listen more closely at the bathroom door. That was some falsetto he had going on there, which would completely explain why he hadn’t heard her calling his name. 

 

A harsh, deep squeak sounded from inside the bathroom, the sound of feet moving quickly over wet tile. Crossing her fingers, she slowly opened the door, hoping she wouldn’t alert him she was there for once - unlikely because of previously mentioned ninja skills, but she could hope. “Please let him be dancing,” she mouthed, tilting her head up to send her wish from her lips to God’s ears.

 

She peeked her head into the bathroom, steam from the hot shower roiling around in the sudden breeze she had made. Oliver was still singing, having apparently finished with his Aerosmith concert and moving onto...A quick listen to be sure that she wasn’t hearing things (she still wasn’t sure she wasn’t hearing things) but no, her first guess had been right. That was Piano Man.

 

Opening the door a bit wider, she was able to get her head through the crack she had made and into the bathroom properly. At which her glasses promptly steamed up, blocking the momentary view she had had of Oliver behind the glass doors of their shower, her loofa on a stick in his hand, using it as a microphone. “Well, crap,” she told herself quietly after her view was blocked by stupid things like the laws of thermodynamics. 

“Felicity?”

 

“Double crap.”

 

His still shampoo covered head came out of the back end of the shower, sliding the door open slightly. “I..um...I didn’t hear you come in.”

 

“I can’t imagine why. I mean, it was a lovely concert you were giving the shampoo bottles there. I’m honestly upset that I missed the beginning of it. And that you didn’t give me a chance to applaud between songs.”

 

The smile he gave her, half grin, half smirk, all love, warmed any piece of her that might have still been cold after her walk from the street to the apartment and up the stairs. “I can give you an encore later if you want.”

 

Oh, yay. Her glasses were clearing up enough so that she could see him.. “I’d like that. Maybe we could make Springsteen into lullabies.” 

 

His laugh echoed around the acoustics of the bathroom, making it even louder than normal as he pulled back into the water to wash the shampoo out of his hair. “Feel like joining me?”

 

Already beginning to strip out of her clothes, she asked, “In the shower or in a duet?”

 

“I think both could probably be arranged.”

 

“Only if you tell me how you got sprayed by a skunk,” she told him, stepping into the shower at the back where he had left room for her.

 

Oliver actually stopped rinsing the soap, tuning while water was still dripping from his hair and into his face. That wasn’t fair. How was she supposed to concentrate on what he was telling her when he was all...like that. She heard her name. “Huh?”

 

“What do you mean, how I was sprayed by a skunk?”

 

“Well, the news report on the radio said you had a tomato soup bath. And everyone knows that is the only thing that gets rid of skunk smell is tomato soup. Ergo,” she shrugged. Which, given how Oliver’s eyes darkened at the movement, must have done something fun to her breasts. 

 

“One of the volunteers was bringing out another pot and had a misstep.” He took a step out of the spray and closer to her, absently licking his upper lip. “It spilled on me, thankfully, and not one of the other volunteers or anyone in line.” 

 

“Oh.” That was her, master of wordplay. But given the way her boyfriend (and there were the butterflies again) was looming over her with that look in his eye, she supposed no one could blame her for not having a better response to him having hot, well, lukewarm at best, tomato soup dumped on him.

 

He stopped right next to her lips though, and she let out a disappointed little noise. “Skunk, really?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Melissa (dettiot), for the idea of Tomato Soup Bath as a reason for Oliver to get home to the loft before Felicity. And thanks to Claire (andcreation) for the original hilarious scene of Oliver singing Aerosmith.


End file.
